


dance with me tonight

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, dumb academy ramblings, i have no explanation for this really i just wanted it so i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 12:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3381518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dancing's like science. You can do it on your own, but it never really works out the way it should do. You need a partner to make it work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dance with me tonight

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on some headcanon-ing I did on twitter a while back (if you want a peek/spoiler: https://twitter.com/jemmasimmmons/status/557981625712377856) and I finally got around to writing it. The title comes from the Olly Murs song.
> 
> Mostly for Eva (superclones on tumblr) because of how much she loves Academy!Fitzsimmons (even more than I do).

'What I don't understand is why you want to join an elective _now_.'

'And what do you mean by that?'

Fitz propped himself up on one elbow on the bed and squinted sideways at his best friend. Jemma was perched cross-legged on her chair at her desk, flipping through the Academy's list of elective classes with all the scrutiny of a forensic expert (which, technically, she practically was). Every so often, she would highlight in pink something on the page, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

It was Friday night, and instead of under-age drinking in the Boilerroom (which had been what Fitz had planned for the evening up until half an hour ago) the two of them were holed up in Jemma's room while she pored over the Academy's prospectus.

'What I mean is, you don't _need_ to join one. It's not like you need the extra credit.' Fitz couldn't help but smirk as he said that.

It was true. Neither of them needed any extra credit for their grades that semester; their lab work alone had lifted their grades to a high enough level to place them head and shoulders above the other, older cadets. Knowing that gave Fitz a smug satisfaction he hadn't known he would ever feel.

'I know I don't need to,' Jemma scoffed, twisting herself in her chair so she was facing him. 'But I want to.'

'Why?'

She shrugged. 'It's something to do. Something new. There's an endless amount of things we could try...'

'Oh, so it's _we_ now, is it?'

She looked at him, her doe eyes wide and innocent. 'Of course it is.'

Fitz groaned, and fell backwards onto her bed. Of course it was.

'And it's an excellent way to meet new people. Make new friends.'

A spark of jealousy flared in his chest.

'What do you want new friends for?'

Jemma rolled her eyes at him. 'I don't want new friends, silly. But in an organisation such as this, the more people you know, the more connections you have. We've got to think about where we go after the Academy, Fitz.'

The jealousy ebbed away, replaced by a pulse of affection. Already, after only a few months of friendship, she was joining them together as a unit for the next section of their lives. That was one 'we' Fitz could live with.

'Alright then. What have you found?'

Jemma sighed and threw down her highlighter and Fitz immediately knew he'd said the wrong thing.

'Lots of things,' she complained. 'Too many things! I want to try everything on this stupid list, from baking...'

'You can already bake...'

'...To pottery...'

'You hate clay, Jem...'

'...To karate!'

Fitz's eyes widened in alarm.

'Okay, maybe not karate,' Jemma conceded and Fitz felt his shoulders relax. 'But there's too much to choose from!'

'Alright, alright,' he said, gently, anxious to ease her growing frustration. 'Which is the one you want to try the most?'

Jemma fell quiet, her fingers tracing back through the list. 'Ballroom,' she murmured. 'Ballroom dancing.'

Fitz swallowed. 'Um...really?'

'Yes. Really.' Jemma flipped the page and sighed. 'But we can't. It's being held at the same time as chem lab.'

'Oh.' Fitz tried to hide his relief, to little success. 'Well, never mind. Which one did you want to try next most?'

'Oh, forget it.' Jemma pushed the list away from her and left her chair to fall onto the bed beside him. 'It was just a stupid idea, anyway,' she muttered.

Fitz grimaced at the disappointment in her tone.

'We can try another elective next semester,' he offered lamely.

'Mmm.'

Jemma stretched herself out next to him like a cat, her head resting on his left arm which was flung across the duvet. The back of her skull pressed hard into the soft flesh inside his elbow. She smelt like washing powder and apples, tickling at the back of Fitz's nose.

'What was it about dancing?' he asked, after a while. 'Why'd you want to do that instead of...bloody _pottery_ classes?'

Jemma shrugged into his arm.

'I've always wanted to dance,' she said softly. 'I used to watch Strictly Come Dancing with my mum every time it was on. I liked the music...and the movements...' She sighed deeply. 'And the dresses.'

'Bloody hell, if you want a dress, Jem, I'll buy you a dress.'

She smiled, squeezing his wrist in a gesture of appreciative silence.

'It wasn't just those things though,' she said, her fingers still tracing the veins on his wrist like there was a pattern there only she could see. 'It was the fact that you did it with a parter. Like lab work. Dancing's like science. You can do it on your own, but it never really works out the way it should do.' Her head lolled sideways onto his shoulder. 'You need a partner to make it work.'

Fitz fell silent, quietly breathing in the top of her hair. Jemma's hand slid away from his wrist and she crossed her arms across her chest, the ultimate defeat.

'It was a stupid idea. A whim. They probably ask that you have experience anyway. Which neither of us do.'

Fitz didn't say anything. In his mind, cogs began to turn as he started piecing together parts of a plan, a plan he wanted to keep to himself just for now.

After another few minutes lying on his arm (Fitz was starting to get pins and needles now), Jemma pushed herself up and gave him a pat on the leg.

'Right then,' she said, heaving herself off the bed and shaking her hair out of its tight ponytail. 'D'you want to head down to the boilerroom?'

She looked beautiful from that angle, with her hair tumbling over her slim shoulders and her hands resting on her hips. The harsh light from the uncovered lightbulb in her room shone out around her head like a hazy halo, making her skin look lighter, like it was glowing. Fitz only stared for a split second before he remembered to shut his mouth.

He grinned up at her. 'Sounds perfect.'

 

 

They were just heading back up to his dorm from the library a few days later, their arms loaded up with physics textbooks, when Fitz turned to Jemma and told her he'd forgotten some thing.

'Do you want to go back?' Jemma asked, her nose scrunching up as she peered at him. 'Was it something important?'

'Nah,' Fitz said. 'Nothing important.' He fumbled in his back pocket and brought out his room key. 'Listen, you head on over there and I'll run back and catch you up.'

'You sure? I don't mind coming with you...'

'No, it doesn't make any sense us both going.' He pressed the key into her palm and gave her a quick smile. 'I'll catch you up, okay?'

He turned around and sprinted back towards the library before she had a chance to protest any further.

 

 

It took him a little longer than he had wanted to find what he was looking for.

Normally, Fitz never ventured further into the library than the comfy armchairs near the coffee machine, unless Jemma dragged him to the shelves to pick out his own textbooks for once. Eventually though, he discovered what he had been searching for, tucked away on a back shelf behind a book on the anatomy of rainforest frogs that was so covered in dust that it looked like it hadn't been checked out since Fitz's mum had been in college.

The librarian raised an eyebrow at him as he handed the books over to her, along with his student identification card.

'Some recreational reading, I presume?' she remarked.

Fitz stuffed the books down to the bottom of his rucksack. 'Something like that.'

 

 

Later that evening, he feigned exhaustion to curb their late night study session, much to Jemma's despair.

'But the physics test is tomorrow!' she wailed.

'Jemma, you could pass that test if the paper was in Latin and you were standing on your head.'

She pouted. 'I am strongly regretting telling you that I can speak Latin.'

He grinned at her. ' _Vive et vivant_.' He nudged her with his foot. 'Come on. Scooch.'

Jemma lifted herself off his bed in an elaborate display of reluctance.

'When I get my first B since primary school tomorrow, I'll know who to blame,' she warned, scooping up her books from the floor. She paused though, as she was half-way out the door and turned back with a small smile.

'Sleep well, Fitz.'

'You too, Simmons.'

Fitz waited until the door shut behind her. Then, he counted to sixty before sliding off his bed and retrieving the library books from his rucksack.

 

 

Jemma had been right (as always).

Dancing was possible on your own. But you needed a partner to make it _work_.

After half an hour of spinning in clumsy circles around his tiny dorm room, muttering the step count under his breath while trying and failing to follow the instructions from the books on ballroom dance lying open on his bed, Fitz decided he needed a new strategy.

Quickly checking that his corridor was empty, he scurried down the hall to the cleaning cupboard and plucked out the communal mop from inside. Given that most of the guys down his corridor seemed to share his attitude towards domestics (if there was something growing out of the toilet, it needed cleaning), he highly doubted it would be missed.

A good thing too, seeing as he would probably be needing it for most of the night.

Back in his dorm, Fitz booted up his computer and pulled up YouTube. He typed into the search bar 'how to dance', but then quickly altered it to 'how to ballroom dance' once he realised there was many different styles of dance and most of them were ones he never wanted to watch, let alone subject himself to trying.

 

 

After trying a few video tutorials, Fitz realised he needed to alter his search again, from 'how to ballroom dance' to 'how to ballroom dance for beginners'. And then from there, 'how to ballroom dance for very very slow beginners'.

By the time the digital clock on his radio told him it was gone midnight, Fitz was debating making his search 'how to ballroom dance for Scottish idiots with two left feet and no sense of rhythm'. Blearily rubbing his itchy eyes with the back of his jumper sleeve, Fitz wanted nothing more than to shut his computer down and crawl into bed.

But if there was anything Leopold Fitz hated, it was being made to give up and there was no way he was going to let a bloody ballroom dancing elective defeat him now.

Gritting his teeth, he picked up his 'partner' from the bed and held one hand down low on the mop's handle, the other drifting up where Jemma's shoulder would be, if she was here, dancing with him.

You needed a partner to make dancing _work_.

Fitz sighed, and pressed play on the video.

'And a one, two, three, one, two...'

 

 

'So,' Fitz said slowly, as he watch Jemma chew at the end of her pen as she lay on his bed, just over a week later. 'How serious were you about joining the ballroom dance elective?'

 

 

'I can't believe you got Agent Sully to agree to this,' Jemma whispered as they walked into the Academy gym together, later that afternoon. She had her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow. 'He never lets _anyone_ skip lab!'

Fitz grinned, and he steered her into a corner of the gym to wait for the elective teachers to join the class. There were about fifteen or sixteen other cadets in the gym; ballroom was a more popular elective than Fitz had thought it would be. Thinking about it, the popularity might have had something to do with the current rumours flitting around that the Cavalry had taken it when she was at Operations. Somehow, Fitz doubted it was true. Who could imagine the Cavalry doing something as mundane as _ballroom_?

'It wasn't that hard, really. Considering we've both already passed his class, and he knows what I do when I get bored...'

Jemma snorted. 'Tell me you didn't threaten to blow up the lab again.'

'I can't make any promises.'

She smiled at him, her Fitz smile, _his_ smile, and leant into his side. Fitz felt a warm, golden glow spread through his chest and he exhaled softly, trying to calm the nerves jumping through every inch of his body.

'Do you think we're overdressed?' Jemma wondered aloud, her eyes scanning the other cadets anxiously.

Fitz frowned, and glanced down at her before he could help himself.

Jemma had worn a dress, a pretty powder-pink floaty dress with matching flats and her hair was falling in shiny waves, loose around her shoulders. She looked soft and dainty and delicate and absolutely breathtaking. Fitz had obligingly put on a clean, white shirt and pressed trousers as well, but even then he didn't feel like he was worthy to be the one standing by her side.

But perhaps they were both dressed a little more smartly than the rest of the cadets, who were crowding around in their tracksuit bottoms and Academy t-shirts.

Fitz shrugged. 'If you can't dress up for your own ballroom dance elective then when can you?'

Jemma gave an appreciative squeeze to his arm then hushed him into silence as the agents leading the elective strode into the centre of the gym. Fitz had never seen them before but they quickly introduced themselves as Agents Penn and Kuhn.

When Agent Penn called for the cadets to partner up, Jemma's hold on his arm tightened, as if there was a chance he would decide to pick another partner over her.

'Maybe this was a bad idea,' she murmured to him as the agents ran through the basic waltz steps for them. Her skin had bleached and the palms of her hands were slightly sweaty. 'Everyone else seems so much more experienced than we do.'

'Yeah, but that's why we're here, isn't it? To get experience?'

Jemma bit at her bottom lip as their teachers demonstrated the starting position. Automatically, Fitz slid one hand down to her waist as their instructors circled the cadets, adjusting their arms and feet. As Agent Kuhn reached them though, he noted Fitz's hands, one resting carefully on Jemma's waist, the other holding her hand at shoulder height and he nodded.

'Nice framework.'

Jemma's cheeks flushed to match her dress and Fitz grinned in spite of himself.

Agent Penn clapped her hands to call for attention.

'We're going to start without music,' she said. 'Just until you get the hang of the rhythm. Remember, dancing is all about being aware of your partner. Where they are, how they are feeling. Just like if you were in the field.'

She began to count the steps out loud, and the cadets around them instantly starting shuffling in slow circles around the gym floor.

Fitz tried to step forward to make his first step, but at the same time, Jemma did so too so that they ended up bumping into one another.

'No, Simmons, _I'm_ leading. _You're_ supposed to go backwards.'

She huffed as they tried again, her right foot hopping backwards as his own slid forwards. 'I don't like going backwards. I can't see where I'm going.'

'You're supposed to trust your partner to lead you in the right direction.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Well, of course I trust you...'

'Jemma, you're out of time.' Fitz started to count for her. 'Back, slide, together, forward, slide together...'

Jemma mouthed the words with him, her feet obediently copying the movements. They began to move together, gliding around the gym with their bodies mirroring the other's movements. Jemma stopped fighting his lead and instead started to follow him. They had fallen into their own familiar rhythm without even thinking about it; dancing became something they could do together as easily as science.

When Agent Penn put the music on, Fitz hardly noticed. He wasn't even entirely aware of what his feet were doing any more either. All that mattered in the world was Jemma, and her hand resting lightly on his shoulder and the curve of her waist under his touch.

'Are you sure you've never done this before?' she enquired, as Agent Kuhn gave them a thumbs up as they twirled past him.

Fitz coughed, avoiding her eyes. 'Positive. Why'd you ask?'

'You're just very good at it that's all.'

'What, and I can't be good at something without having done it before?' he teased.

'Of course not, that's not what I meant!' She gave a little squeak as he let go of her hand, a burst of bravery making him turn her in a spin before pulling her back into him. 'Fitz!'

'It's okay.' Her fingers clutched at the fabric of his shirt. 'I've got you.'

She fixed him with a glare. 'Don't ever do that again.'

'What, never?'

She considered. 'Well, maybe if you ask first.'

He didn't have to count the steps for her anymore; they moved together, two halves of a machine beating in perfect time.

'What was it you were saying earlier?' Fitz asked. 'Doubting my genius ability to pick things up first time?'

'I _wasn't_ doubting your genius, Fitz!' Jemma cocked her head to one side. 'I'd never doubt you at all.'

'So, is this you accepting my natural talent at ballroom dancing?'

Jemma sighed, but she was smiling too. 'This is me admitting your natural talent at ballroom dancing.'

Triumphantly, Fitz let the hand on her waist slide so it fitted in the small of her back and he dipped her backwards so low her hair skimmed the ground.

Jemma blinked up at him, startled. 'Okay, you have definitely done this before,' she accused.

He laughed.

'What's so funny?' she demanded, as he pulled her upright.

Fitz shook his head with a smile. 'Nothing. Just you.'

Jemma rolled her eyes and Fitz laughed again, before taking her hand and leading her off for another waltz on the dance floor.

 

 

He didn't think it was quite so funny the next morning, however, when he let her use his computer and remembered he hadn't cleared his search history.

 


End file.
